V. I. Lenin

Theses On The Constituent Assembly

Written:11 or 12 of December, 1917First Published:26 December, 1917 inPravaNo. 213

      Published according to the manuscript verified with a
      typewritten copy bearying Lenin's corrections.Source:Lenin’sCollected
      Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972,
      pp. 379-383Translated:Yuri Sdobnikov and George
      Hanna, Edited by George HannaTranscription & HTML Markup:Charles
      Farrell and David WaltersOnline Version:Lenin Internet ArchiveNovember,
      2000

1.	The demand for the convocation of a Constituent
      Assembly was a perfectly legitimate part of the programme of
      revolutionary Social-Democracy, because in a bourgeois republic
      the Constituent Assembly represents the highest form of
      democracy and because, in setting up a Pre-parliament, the
      imperialist republic headed by Kerensky was preparing to rig the
      elections and violate democracy in a number of ways.

2.	While demanding the convocation of a Constituent
      Assembly, revolutionary Social-Democracy has ever since the
      beginning of the Revolution of 1917 repeatedly emphasised that a
      republic of Soviets is a higher form of democracy than the usual
      bourgeois republic with a Constituent Assembly.

3.	For the transition from the bourgeois to the socialist
      system, for the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Republic of
      Soviets (of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’
      Deputies) is not only a higher type of democratic institution
      (as compared with the usual bourgeois republic crowned by a
      Constituent Assembly), but is the only form capable of securing
      the most painless transition to socialism.

4.	The convocation of the Constituent Assembly in our
      revolution on the basis of lists submitted in the middle of
      October 1917 is taking place under conditions which preclude the
      possibility of the elections to this Constituent Assembly
      faithfully expressing the will of the people in general and of
      the working people in particular.

5.	Firstly, proportional representation results in a
      faithful expression of the will of the people only when the
      party lists correspond to the real division of the people
      according to the party groupings reflected in those lists. In
      our case, however, as is well known, the party which from May to
      October had the largest number of followers among the people,
      and especially among the peasants—the
      Socialist-Revolutionary Party—came out with united election
      lists for the Constituent Assembly in the middle of October
      1917, but split in November 1917, after the elections and before
      the Assembly met.

For this reason, there is not, nor can there be, even a formal
      correspondence between the will of the mass of the electors and
      the composition of the elected Constituent Assembly.

6.	Secondly, a still more important, not a formal nor
      legal, but a socio-economic, class source of the discrepancy
      between the will of the people, and especially the will of the
      working classes, on the one hand, and the composition of the
      Constituent Assembly, on the other, is due to the elections to
      the Constituent Assembly having taken place at a time when the
      overwhelming majority of tile people could not yet know the full
      scope and significance of the October, Soviet,
      proletarian-peasant revolution, which began on October 25, 1917,
      i.e., after the lists of candidates for the Constituent Assembly
      had been submitted.

7.	The October Revolution is passing through successive
      stages of development before our very eyes, winning power for
      the Soviets and wresting political rule from the bourgeoisie and
      transferring it to the proletariat and poor peasantry.

8.	It began with the victory of October 24-25 in the
      capital, when the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of
      Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, the vanguard of the
      proletarians and of the most politically active section of the
      peasants, gave a majority to the Bo!shevik Party and put it in
      power.

9.	Then, in the course of November and December, the
      revolution spread to the entire army and peasants, this being
      expressed first of all in the deposition of the old leading
      bodies (army committees,guberniapeasant committees,
      the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russia Soviet of
      Peasants’ Deputies, etc.)—which expressed the
      superseded, compromising phase of the revolution, its bourgeois,
      and not proletarian, phase, and which were therefore inevitably
      bound to disappear under the pressure of the deeper and broader
      masses of the people—and in the election of new leading
      bodies in their place.

10.	This mighty movement of the exploited people for the
      reconstruction of the leading bodies of their organisations has
      not ended even now, in the middle of December 1917, and the
      Railwaymen’s Congress, which is still in session,
      represents one of its stages.

11.	Consequently, the grouping of the class forces in
      Russia in the course of their class struggle is in fact
      assuming, in November and December 1917, a form differing in
      principle from the one that the party lists of candidates for
      the Constituent Assembly compiled in the middle of October 1917
      could have reflected.

12.	Recent events in the Ukraine (partly also in Finland
      and Byelorussia, as well as in the Caucasus) point similarly to
      a regrouping of class forces which is taking place in the
      process of the struggle between the bourgeois nationalism of the
      Ukrainian Bada, the Finnish Diet, etc., on the one hand, and
      Soviet power, the proletarian-peasant revolution in each of
      these national republics, on the other.

13.	Lastly, the civil war which was started by the
      Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolutionary revolt against the Soviet
      authorities, against the workers’ and peasants’
      government, has finally brought the class struggle to a head and
      has destroyed every chance of setting in a formally democratic
      way the very acute problems with which history has confronted
      the peoples of Russia, and in the first place her working class
      and peasants.

14.	Only the complete victory of the workers and peasants
      over the bourgeois and landowner revolt (as expressed in the
      Cadet-Kaledin movement), only the ruthless military suppression
      of this revolt of the slave-owners can really safeguard the
      proletarian-peasant revolution. The course of events and the
      development of the class struggle in the revolution have
      resulted in the slogan "All Power to the Constituent
      Assembly!"—which disregards the gains of the workers’
      and peasants’ revolution, which disregards Soviet power,
      which disregards the decisions of the Second All-Russia Congress
      of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, of the
      Second All-Russia Congress of Peasants’ Deputies,
      etc.—becoming in factthe slogan of the Cadets and
      the Kaledinites and of their helpers. The entire people are now
      fully aware that the Constituent Assembly, if it parted ways
      with Soviet power, would inevitably be doomed to political
      extinction.

15.	One of the particularly acute problems of national
      life is the problem of peace. A really revolutionary struggle
      for peace began in Russia only after the victory of the October
      25 Revolution, and the first fruits of this victory were the
      publication of the secret treaties, the conclusion of an
      armistice, and the beginning of open negotiations for a general
      peace without annexations and indemnities.

Only now are the broad sections of the people actually receiving
      a chance fully and openly to observe the policy of revolutionary
      struggle for peace and to study its results.

At the time of the elections to the Constituent Assembly the
      mass of the people had no such chance.

It is clear that the discrepancy between the composition of the
      elected Constituent Assembly and the actual will of the people
      on the question of terminating the war is inevitable from this
      point of view too.

16.	The result of all the above-mentioned circumstances
      taken together is that the Constituent Assembly, summoned on the
      basis of the election lists of the parties existing prior to the
      proletarian-peasant revolution under the rule of the
      bourgeoisie, must inevitably clash with the will and interests
      of the working and exploited classes which on October 25 began
      the socialist revolution against the bourgeoisie. Naturally, the
      interests of this revolution stand higher than the formal rights
      of the Constituent Assembly, even if those formal rights were
      not undermined by the absence in the law on the Constituent
      Assembly of a provision recognising the right of the people to
      recall their deputies and hold new elections at any moment.

17.	Every direct or indirect attempt to consider the
      question of the Constituent Assembly from a formal, legal point
      of view, within the framework of ordinary bourgeois democracy
      and disregarding the class struggle and civil war, would be a
      betrayal of the proletariat’s cause, and the adoption of
      the bourgeois standpoint. The revolutionary Social-Democrats are
      duty bound to warn all and sundry against this error, into which
      a few Bolshevik leaders, who have been unable to appreciate the
      significance of the October uprising and the tasks of the
      dictatorship of the proletariat, have strayed.

18.	The only chance of securing a painless solution to the
      crisis which has arisen owing to the divergence between the
      elections to the Constituent Assembly, on the one hand, and the
      will of the people and the interests of the working and
      exploited classes, on the other, is for the people to exercise
      as broadly and as rapidly as possible the right to elect the
      members of the Constituent Assembly anew, and for the
      Constituent Assembly to accept the law of the Central Executive
      Committee on these new elections, to proclaim that it
      unreservedly recognises Soviet power, the Soviet revolution, and
      its policy on the questions of peace, the land and workers’
      control, and to resolutely join the camp of the enemies of the
      Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolution.

19.	Unless these conditions are fulfilled, the crisis in
      connection with the Constituent Assembly can be settled only in
      a revolutionary way, by Soviet power adopting the most
      energetic, speedy, firm and determined revolutionary measures
      against the Cadet-Kaledin counter-revolution, no matter behind
      what slogans and institutions (even participation in the
      Constituent Assembly) this counter-revolution may hide. Any
      attempt to tie the hands of Soviet power in this struggle would
      be tantamount to aiding counterrevolution.